Amazon customers misbehave over banana slicer

July 9, 2013 • 5:38 am

Have you considered buying one of these on Amazon?

Screen shot 2013-07-08 at 6.10.03 PM

Before you buy, read some of the reviews. This is one of those items, like the “girls-only pens,” that Amazon customers have a high old time with. There are 427 pages of comments, and, as you can imagine, some of them are a bit off-color.

A few reviews: 

Screen shot 2013-07-08 at 6.13.26 PM

Screen shot 2013-07-08 at 6.13.13 PM

x

Screen shot 2013-07-08 at 6.19.14 PM

Screen shot 2013-07-08 at 6.26.17 PM

h/t: Michael

59 thoughts on “Amazon customers misbehave over banana slicer”

  2. “Great for cereal”

    Why would I buy a banana slicer then use it on my cereal? Most of my cereals are already small pieces. Next they will tell me use use it on oatmeal.

    1. Erm…oats are a cereal. If it’s in the grass family and you eat its fruit, it’s a cereal. That means especially wheat, rice, and corn, but also includes oats, barley, rye, millet, sorghum, and others.

      It doesn’t include buckwheat or quinoa, even though they’re culinarily similar. Different family.

      Cheers,

      b&

      1. I have always disliked oats. They taste like a cardboard box to me, so they are in the out-group. 🙂

        2. You’ve never had real oats, then. Hint: if it has a painting of a traditional American Christian on the box, or if you see the word, “instant,” anywhere on the packaging, those are oat-detived food substitutes and not actual oats.

          What you want is steel-cut (Irish style) oats, preferably in bulk from some place like Whole Paycheck. The oats should smell sweet.

          To cook, use a pressure cooker or else you’ll be standing over the stove all morning.

          You’ll want 2:1 liquid:oats in a bowl. Just water and oats actually works remarkably well for a savory dish with a faintly sweet aroma, but that can get boring pretty quickly.

          Instead use milk (or cream!) rather than water. If you insist on sugar, add it to the bowl before cooking…but honey or maple works better than table sugar or brown sugar. Better, add some fresh fruit instead. And a splash of sherry doesn’t hurt (the alcohol will all boil off), or maybe a squeeze of lemon or lime juice. Cinnamon, vanilla, coconut oil, and the other usual suspects are all worth considering. You can make chocolate oatmeal by adding cocoa powder; if you go this route, I recommend Scharffen Berger’s unsweetened powder with half as much honey or maple as sugar is called for mixed with the milk before you add the oats.

          Place a rack in the bottom of the pressure cooker and cover it with water. Place the bowl on the rack. Bring to pressure over high heat, hold for 8-12 minutes (depending on whether you prefer your oats al dente as I do or mushy as others do), and remove it from the heat and let it cool until the safety releases. Serve and enjoy!

          The whole process should take 15-20 minutes, during which you’ll have plenty of time to slice some fresh veggies and cook up some sausage or scramble an egg or whatever. I know that’s 14-19 minutes longer than many think it should take to prepare breakfast, but I think it’s well worth it….

          Cheers,

          b&

          1. A crock pot works great also. Just place steel cut oats, whatever combination of water – milk – cream, and a selection of your favorite dried fruits (dates work great!) in a crock pot. Before going to bed turn crock pot on low. Go to bed. Get up in the morning, stir contents of crock pot, then eat! Mixing in some chopped up sausage, like a nice Swedish style korv, is pretty good too. Typical korv is seasoned with allspice, but I like to add cinnamon to mine as well.

          2. I’m not a fan of crock pots. I’ve gotten sick from them, and there’s nothing you can do with a crock pot in eight hours that you can’t do with a pressure cooker in eight minutes.

            But you’re spot on about making a savory oatmeal with meats! Don’t know how I managed to overlook that one….

            b&

          3. I think I mostly agree with you about crock pots. I’ve never gotten sick from them, but there are not many things that they cook well. At one time I tried all sorts of recipes in the crock pot and they all pretty much sucked. Can’t think of a better way to ruin a perfectly good piece of chicken, pork or beef. You get that fall off the bone yet so dry it takes a gallon of water to choke it down effect that only a crock pot can achieve.

            But I do find it convenient for steel cut oats. It literally takes 3 minutes to load the pot, and it comes out good. I don’t have any experience with a pressure cooker, but I have been meaning to rectify that.

          4. I’m not sure what I’d do without the pressure cooker.

            I can, for example, decide late in the afternoon that I’d like some beans with dinner. My microwave has a “simmer” sensor function; I’ll put the beans in a bowl with some water, put it in the microwave and press some buttons, and it’ll bring it to a simmer and hold it for the set time — two minutes, in this case. I’ll then walk away for an hour or more. When I’m ready to cook dinner, the beans are ready for whatever else I’ll do to them, and then they go in the pressure cooker. About eight minutes under pressure and they’re done.

            I mean, who would have thought of beans as fast food?

            Cheers,

            b&

    1. There is this:

      Kirk Cameron’s banana slicer, August 7, 2012
      By Noah (Atlanta, GA) – See all my reviews
      If God does not exist, then how is it that a banana fits so perfectly in this banana slicer? CHECKMATE, ATHEISTS!

    2. Yep, and set your watches for how long it takes for the top banana @ the DI to whine that this website covers slicers.

      1. Funny, I thought the DI was full of nothing but second bananas. Or was it that everyone who worked at the DI had already gone bananas. Well, I’d love to stay and try to figure that out, but I’ve got to split.

  4. My favourite Amazon customer reviews are for The Very Best of David Hasselhoff. (What I especially like about them is that the reviews seemed to evolve their own form over time, with variations on specific elements in each review. They are hilarious.)

    1. Where are the warning stickers?

      One of my favorites was a “Caution! Blade Rotates When Engine Is Running” sticker I once saw on a particular brand of lawn mower. (a regular walk behind mower for typical home use, not a multifunction riding mower with a PTO.)

      1. Bear in mind that this product is the “desk” part only. It attaches to real steering wheels, to serve as a makeshift desk. In your car. Insert distracted driving joke here.

        (I believe you mentioned your son is quite young and therefore hopefully not driving?)

        1. Wow…I did not click on the link…I thought this was a steering wheel for your desktop. NOT the other way around.
          And yes, the only vehicle my child is operating is his Big Wheels.

    3. OMG the pictures made me cry with laughter, as did the review that cuts out all of a sudden. These reviewers are great!

  6. I am sure the reviews of this banana slicer have something interesting to say regarding the “blank slate” issue.

    1. Didn’t Jane Goodall observe cultural variations in the banana slicers that tool making chimps made from luongo wood?
      And wasn’t this technology exapted for slicing squid during the aquatic phase?

      1. Interesting, but. The key question is if, when and why apes developed an evolved predisposition for slicing bananas down to size!

        And, poor squid! How . . . limp.

        1. The apes can’t just put a whole banana on their cereal! It makes the milk splash funny.

      2. She did, but due to the rise of labour costs the slicer was discontinued. It caused quite an uproar in the chimp/gorilla communities.

  7. I’m surprised that nobody has yet come up with a catchy name for this phenomenon – or published a book. You’d kind of expect there to be hours of entertainment to be had reading the reviews for UFO detectors, uranium, a book called “How to Avoid Huge Ships,” and “The 2009-2014 Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats in Greater China.” Tuscan milk and frozen rabbit, not so much. And yet.

    2. I wonder how that is doing on sales. If that makes good money I will have found a new career.

  10. That must be the best thing since sliced banana! … no, wait.

  11. Be sure to check out customer images for the 571, which includes reaction when it was introduced into the wild.

      1. Yes and you can also order it with wipe clean pages.
        So they don’t stick together

  13. LMFAO @ Mrs Toledo and the “day’s banana slices”…hahaha…that was hilarious! Love these. While banana slicers might be a bit…unnecessary, I have to say I LOVE my apple slicer/corer.

    1. An apple corer! I could use that. So off to amazon I am to see what they have and soon enough I’m on a page about the Chef’n StemGem Strawberry Stem Remover. Great customer review average. I’m kind of intrigued… After the very first most helpful review, “terrific tool, terrible consequences” I was won over. Stem remover is on its way.

  14. Those commenters are hilarious. They really should make a book of the responses.

  15. By
    Jubal Harshaw “Dr. Scott” (S.C. USA) – See all my reviews
    This review is from: Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer (Kitchen)
    As a mohel I thought this would be just the thing to add to my “toolbox”. However; it is more of a single use device. It is top rack dishwasher safe, but, it’s plastic construction precludes heat sterilization. I am holding out for a titanium model.

  16. Eish, I’ve read 5 pages of reviews and still can’t decide.

    1. I guess, since there are 4266 reviews, there are bound to be some that are useful.

      1. Oh, wait, I see you can organise the reviews by Most Helpful …

  17. Given the very name of the product, one would think that the product, ‘Nads for Men hair remover , is a spoof. Some of the reviews are quite amusing:

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B003JFJF5E/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

    But, as a source of side-splitting hilarity, the reviews for this, related, product are hard to beat:

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B000KKNQBK/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_top?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

    1. Ha ha, that second link was funny. The product should just incorporate the warnings the reviewers gave and use the same language.

      1. While I’m all for removing the bollocks (or at least put them on an empirically equal level with more cunning parts), I don’t see why the age old brazilian wouldn’t be the first (if painful) choice.

  19. It is just something else we don’t need like twitter have it but hardly bother to use it.

  20. I was going to do one about how the banana benders in Queensland use the metric system and how an imperial banana cutter just does not cut… er, make the grade, but I never got around to it.

  21. I don’t have so much of a problem with slicing my bananas as I do with peeling them, so I’ve trained myself to eat them peel-and-all. It’s an acquired taste and the inside tends to squish out and the peel gets stuck between my teeth and it irritates my bowel and causes the odd weird feeling. My skin also sometimes breaks out in a rash and people look at me strangely but I have overcome all that and now see it as a victory for the human spirit. Think of me as the banana version of those people who do a lot of body piercing and tattoos. It’s a great discipline and deeply spiritual experience which I can recommend to any troubled soul.

    1. Have you tried eating them via the other end of the alimentary canal? You can’t taste them, which could be a plus if you don’t like bananas and I’m not sure of the nutritive value but, take it from me, it’s FUN!!
      Also, Ray Comfort will explain that they are perfectly shaped for this practice. I’t almost as if they’re intelligently designed!

    1. But what if I don’t like a perfect fit; could it still be considered intelligently designed?

Comments are closed.